A Personal Note
I realize it’s been a few years since you last heard from me—and I have no plans for Whizzered to ever resume normal operations—but I couldn’t let the passing of Thomas Gerbasi go by without writing about him.
What I’m Doing Now
In addition to my job as a senior AI prompt engineer at GDC Group, I spent the last year figuring out how normal people can use AI to improve their daily lives.
Now I write Get Easy Prompts.
In the last week, I’ve shared easy prompts that will help you optimize your LinkedIn and resume to make you irresistible to recruiters, and I also shared a three-prompt system for finding hobbies you truly love.
Zero tech knowledge required. All it takes is copy and paste. And it's free. You can subscribe here.
The Heroes Who Shape Us
I was always a media guy.
Growing up, I was a voracious reader. I'd read anything. If I went to my grandmother's (we called her MeMaw) house in Alvin, Texas, for a weekend, I always carried a couple of books with me. Don't get me wrong; I was a huge nerd. I still watched television (mostly pro wrestling) and played video games (mostly baseball). My grandparents owned a 3,500-acre plant nursery. For a kid, it was a sprawling kingdom filled with adventure, wild animals, and danger. I would sit and read for hours on end; it was inevitable that I'd finish my books and start looking through the piles of MeMaw's magazines, trying to find my next thing to read.
Reader's Digest was my favorite. It was filled with all sorts of stories about every topic you could think of. My favorite thing about Reader's Digest was how it was the size of a paperback book, making it much easier to hold than the comparatively huge magazine size. When I ran out of Reader's Digest stories, I turned to Woman's World, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal and Redbook. All of them were filled with fluff, like "How To Keep Your Husband Happy With Your Cooking," recipes, and "tips for happiness in the bedroom." Whatever that meant.
I was probably eight years old when I discovered newspapers. Grandpa took the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Post. Suddenly, I had brand-new things to read every single day! And a lot of them were about sports!
As I consumed every single sports story in every issue of both newspapers, I began to realize I loved sportswriting. The men who covered sports for those papers back then became giants to me. Ed Fowler. Mickey Herskowitz. John McClain, the legendary gregarious NFL reporter, became one of the most famous NFL journalists of all time. And Ken Hoffman, who didn't cover sports exclusively, but when he did, wrote with a style that I found utterly incredible.
Those stories, and the men who wrote them, are what made me want to be a sportswriter.
And later in my life, after I'd already decided I wanted to be a sportswriter, it was the stories by men like Thomas Gerbasi that made me pick combat sports as my beat.
On the Beat
When I started covering UFC events as a credentialed reporter in 2008 or so, there were four men whom I was both incredibly excited and incredibly nervous to meet in person. Two of them were journalists; two were longtime boxing pundits who were then working for the UFC.
Dave Meltzer and Steven Marrocco were the reporters. I'd been reading Dave's Observer for something like 15 years at that point. Marrocco was my favorite MMA writer; I felt he was insightful and thorough in a way that few others reporting on the sport were at the time.
Thomas Gerbasi and Ant Evans were, by then, working for the UFC. Gerbasi was the editorial director for the company, and Evans worked in PR. Both men had been guiding lights in boxing coverage for me, though. If I wanted to know everything there was to learn about a big upcoming fight, I would read Gerbasi and Evans, along with Kevin Iole and others.
I met all four men. I became friends with all four men. And though I don't talk to them nearly as often as I'd like, those friendships have continued. Even as I've exited the combat sports world, I still touch base with them every so often.
But it was Gerbasi I talked with the most. I lost touch with most of the people I used to talk to constantly. It's the sort of thing that happens when your career goes a different direction. You lose touch with people.
Gerbasi refused to let that happen with me.
A Communicator & Encourager
When I launched this newsletter, Gerbasi was secretly one of my biggest supporters and fans of what I was doing.
Secretly, of course, because he was the editorial director for the UFC, and while there may not have been an official policy for UFC employees about communicating with me, it was certainly known that it was frowned upon. And yet Tom sent me feedback, or at least a small note, after nearly every newsletter I published. Sometimes he wanted to clarify something I'd written.
He usually just wanted to encourage me. What I was doing was important, he said, and nobody else was going to do it, which was true at the time. It might still be true today. I just don't like the sport enough to do the job anymore.
The entire mixed martial arts world was a blend of incredible moments, revolting actions, dirty business dealings, beautiful moments that I'll remember forever, horrible moments I wish I could forget, drama that was both manufactured and real, and so, so much more. Being involved in it felt like trying to stand in the middle of a hurricane.
Thomas Gerbasi was the calm center of that hurricane.
No matter how ridiculous things got, no matter how stupid, controversial, boring, or downright offensive, Tom was Tom. Always. Nothing affected him, or at least not enough to keep him from doing his job. He had what I considered to be the worst job in the sport—steering a media ship controlled by the UFC—and yet he found joy in telling the stories of the fighters in UFC's employ.
Especially the young, up-and-coming fighters you'd never heard of. Tom relished telling those stories; he would much rather write one of those than another story about how Conor McGregor said he'd started training for a UFC comeback that never materialized.
A Gigantic Loss
Thomas Gerbasi's death on Wednesday leaves a hole in the sport that can never be filled, mainly because there are no more people like Thomas Gerbasi. It leaves a hole in my life, too; I've lost a good friend, mentor, and compass. I ordered his new book last week. It's supposed to be delivered today. I've been so excited to read it, because he was very proud of the work he did on it. He was excited for me to read it.
I'll read it, of course. But man, it's not going to be easy. After reading roughly 1,500 stories written by Thomas Gerbasi over the years, this will be the last new one I'll ever get to read. There will be no more.
But it'll be worth it, of course, because everything Gerbasi ever wrote was worth reading.
I'll miss you a lot, Tom. This place won't be the same without you.
It's interesting to read all these stories about Tom. He seemed to read all my stuff, always had an encouraging word and was quick to share information and resources. I assumed we had a special relationship. It turns out he was a kind mentor to many. That's really amazing.
I talked to him last week about his new book and he was already on to his next project—the history of women's boxing, which was a passion for him. Filled with energy and enthusiasm. I wish there were more Tom Gerbasis. He'll be truly missed.